Nick Easter: England haven't won anything since 2003 and it is time we fixed that

Let’s hope our best laid plans for the championship run a bit more smoothly
than mine did for our training camp in the Algarve.

Nick Easter: It's time England won something

By Nick Easter

6:53AM GMT 31 Jan 2011

I naively packed shorts and flip-flops.They didn’t make it out of my suitcase. It poured down. A few candles would have come in useful as well. We had a two-hour power cut on our first night there. Nothing like a bit of hardship to get you in the mood.

The five days away were, in truth, really useful. It seems another age now when an England squad used to meet on a Sunday night, battered and bruised from weekend matches, wondering how the hell they were going to cram in everything within a few days.

It’s a far better set-up now. We’ve just spent hours going through the detail of what’s required: defensive formation, attacking options, line-outs, restarts. I’m sure Wales have been doing the same. You’ve got to get it so that everything is as familiar to you as it is in your club side. You’ve got to make decisions in a split second in a Test match and you can’t be looking round to see where your team-mate is.

So, no excuses then? Well, there never are when you pull on an England shirt. It’s about delivering. The stakes are high, the scrutiny merciless, and that’s exactly how you want it.

We’re all aware England haven’t won anything since 2003. We can’t do much about the past but we can do a heck of a lot about the present. Yes, we’ve got to be at the top of our game if we’re to get the wins we’re searching for, but that’s what we aim to achieve. Rugby Football Union chief executive John Steele spoke about a target of a top-two finish. Well, any player will tell you they’re targeting a top-one finish. You don’t aim to be anything but the best.

The tricky bit, of course, is making sure it happens. The beauty of this championship is that we can’t look beyond that first match in Cardiff. What a night that promises to be. Six Nations rugby at its best. Full house, loads of hostility in the air, under lights, live on TV – it’s a game to get the juices flowing.

Nervous? Not really. More excited. The noise and the level of interest are part of the experience. Far better to be playing in front of a packed stadium than a half empty one. Players deal with the off-field stuff in different ways. You might block it out completely or really take it on board and try to get the crowd quiet as quickly as possible. I like being the pantomime villain or the party pooper.

For all that, it will be a brilliant occasion on Friday night, it’s just not that unusual for players any more. Even regular club matches now draw 70,000 to Twickenham two or three times a year. The Heineken Cup, too, has exposed players to a whole range of match-day experiences, especially down in France.

It’ll be special at the Millennium Stadium but it’s not something we fear. I’ve heard England once took to playing the Welsh anthem on the bus down to Cardiff to get them used to the singing. Well, the singing will be great, I’m sure, but our minds are on other more down-to-earth matters.

We know that we’ve got to get our game absolutely spot on from the first whistle. We didn’t manage it in Perth in June, and lost, and we didn’t manage it against the All Blacks at Twickenham in November. By the time we got it together it was too late. They’d scored two tries by the end of the first quarter and that was it.

Training has been short, sharp and intense, just like a match will be. Momentum will be crucial in this championship.

My first memories of the Six Nations are back in the early Nineties: England blowing that Grand Slam in Scotland then winning it the next year; two Frenchmen sent off in Paris and Philippe Saint-André finishing off a length-of-the-field try at Twickenham, all great moments.

If England can contribute a few more to cherish this time around then we’ll all be very happy.

Nick Easter is an ambassador for QBE, Official Insurance Partner of England Rugby